"Melee Ranged" Gem Tag?

Since it seems the biggest complaints about Melee is that all the actual melee skills (not the giant AOE screen filling "melee" attacks) are lack luster, and added to that would be the inherent difficulty of safely navigating combat within melee range, would a potential fix be to add a Melee Ranged gem tag? This would allow GGG to introduce certain supports and passives that benefit from using true melee, allowing true melee to be fixed in a very focused way that cannot be reliably used with ranged or ranged melee skills. This could also serve to help true melee life builds by providing specific support gems and passives that buff them yet require melee ranged skills to trigger the affect (and likewise do not provide benefit to ES).

Some examples might be a "Melee Ranged" support gem that has a chance to add an Endurance charge or Frenzy charge plus another effect (like +Damage) based on if it was a strength skill or a dexterity skill being used. Another support gem might create a damage shield stack and after reaching max stacks triggers the shield and this could also be a passive. Another might work similar to CWDT in that after a certain amount of damage to life (which is less than your max life) or from a single hit from any normal attack (Basically, anything that isn't a unique boss's one-shot mechanic that has a huge tell like Voll's mace slam) you go invulnerable for a few seconds or can't go below 1 HP for a few seconds, expending all active Endurance charges to increase the duration of the buff. A Passive might add a stacking buff if you've hit with a Melee Ranged skill recently that adds a percent of additional life regen per second, or adds to dodge chance, or adds armor rating, or taking damage after hitting with a Melee Ranged skill applies some effect.

I think there would be some real potential here that would give GGG more freedom to buff true melee directly without risk of indirectly buffing ES or melee-scaled ranged attacks like Spectral Throw or Groundslam and other pseudo-melee attacks. Melee Ranged gem tags would primarily be added to active skills like Dual Strike, Cleave, Heavy Strike, Double Strike, Viper Strike, Cyclone, Glacial Hammer, and other actually melee ranged skills that cannot be made to cover a large portion of the screen. Various melee AOE skills would need to be reviewed carefully to see which would work and which would be OP or abusive. Trigger gems would NOT get the Melee Ranged tag to avoid ES/ranged build abuse, nor would hybrid gems like Puncture get it unless it could be made to differentiate use between a bow and a melee weapon.

Or maybe those ranged "melee" skills could not benefit from certain support gems or benefit from them to a lesser extent.

I feel like a Melee Ranged tag would be logistically simpler than trying to create exceptions for certain skills, especially since the idea is that this would open up support and passives only Melee Ranged can benefit from.

I wanted to try and expand on the idea a bit and flesh out ideas for possible passives and additional gems.

Support Gem Ideas

Intense Focus - Supported skill generates stacks of "Intense Focus" on the target hit up to x stacks, lowering all damage taken by that target and increasing damage done to that target by y/z% per stack. Can only stack against one target at a time and the bonuses apply only to you against that target. Quality increases duration.

Resolve - Attacking with supported skill increases block and stun recovery by x%, quality increases block chance.

Charge Support - Attacking with supported skill refreshes active charge durations. 10% chance on kill to provide a random charge. 10% chance on hit to steal an active charge from an enemy. nlvl+15% added damage, quality increases charge steal/generate chance up to 20% from 10%.

Armor Penetration Support - Physical damage pierces x% of armor, quality adds to flat crit chance 0.1% per quality.

Intent - Attacking with the supported skill increases certain stats based on weapons used for a short while. Adds x% to armor and evasion while using a shield. Adds y% attack speed when dual wielding. Adds z% damage while using two-handed. Quality adds some life leech.

Cast on Melee Ranged Attack - 10% chance of casting supported spell while attacking with a melee ranged skill. This can only occur once every 6-nPerLvl seconds. Spell damage scales from Melee. Quality increases chance to cast slightly.

Elemental Status Support - Supported skill provides 40% (up to 80% level 20) increased chance to inflict status ailments on hit and increases all elemental weapon damage by a small y%. Quality adds a flat % bonus chance to inflict status ailment of 0.2% per quality. (this means a base 10% chance to, say, freeze becomes 14% at level 1, while 1% quality makes the base chance 10.2%)


Keystone Ideas

Strike the Weak Spot - Located nearest to Duelist. Critical Strike chance now applies to physical armor penetration while using a Melee Ranged skill. Melee Ranged skills can no longer crit.

Bad Blood - Located between Ranger and Shadow. Melee Ranged attacks gain 20% additional damage as Chaos Damage. Can no longer apply status ailments.

In the Thick of Battle - Likely located closest to Marauder. Life increased by 25%, evasion and armor increased by 50%. Can only use Melee Ranged skills directly. (For this to work, most movement skills would gain the Melee Ranged tag since they are that range. This Keystone would prevent casting any spell (except appropriate movement spells that may gain Melee Ranged tag), using any projectile skill, or using any Melee skill not also tagged Melee Ranged directly, though auras and aura-supported curses would need to be tested against if they would be an exception along with other mana reserve skills like the Heralds, but all that loss could be well worth it for the guaranteed survivability)

I do agree that BF, EQ and other "melee" skills aren't really melee. But to separate them with different tags don't really serve a purpose. Just give the "real melee" the tools needed to defend themselves against the constant spike damage that comes along with having to stand in the middle of the crowd.

The problem isn't Blade Flurry and the other ranged melee skills. The problem is, again, that the game doesn't give enough tools to stand in melee range.

Melee Ranged tag could open up room to buff true melee without making pseudo-melee that's actually ranged OP. How else would you propose they fix it by providing those tools while ensuring those tools do not also completely overpower the already comparatively too strong/meta builds and skills? Fortify and similar kinds of skills can still benefit builds that can safely avoid most toe to toe. Without some simple way of controlling who can get access to these tools, you only risk bringing melee up to where it should be while making everything else ridiculously overpowered. Ideas like "Intense Focus" and "In the Thick of Battle" would only be balanced with a Melee Ranged tag and would help get us the exact tools you're looking for.

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CPTBRUMBL3Z wrote:

How else would you propose they fix it by providing those tools while ensuring those tools do not also completely overpower the already comparatively too strong/meta builds and skills?

They can start by implementing Fortify into all (true)melee skills, favourably namelock skills. This version of Fortify may even be better than the support gem. They've separated things before, like Iron Grip Support being "better" than Iron Grip node on the tree.

I don't think this would be OP, and I think reworking almost everything like you're suggesting, would take A LOT more resources. And time. A total rework like you're suggesting, will never happen, because they more or less have to balance the whole tree around it.

Most name lock skills also needs a little damage buff, I think - and that's just number-punching and calculating from GGG's side.

They could also implement nodes like the totem node, letting you use one additional totem, but you can't do damage with your skills yourself. "X increased melee damage, can't deal Projectile Damage or AoE damage except Melee Splash" (yes, it would have different wording and maybe different mechanics, but you get the idea).

Hell, even a node like "25% increased Movement, can't use Movement Skills" would be cool on some builds. But that goes for all builds, not only melee.

just remove melee altogether and make a new type of skills called "melged"
cause this is what melee is right now, just ranged skills scaling of melee weapons

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Miazga wrote:

just remove melee altogether

Melee is fun. So no. Never.

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Phrazz wrote:

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Miazga wrote:

just remove melee altogether

Melee is fun. So no. Never.

Cant argue with this, I played a CI crit sunder this league, and everyone was looking at me strange :)

Still I hope you do get my drift on this.